Make Good People Your Assets

Many times, we hear that people are our greatest assets. This statement is not really true. People are not assets, only good people are assets, the rest are all liabilities. Goodness always needs to be cultivated. If we want to have a good garden we must consciously plant seeds of good flowers and fruits. Weeds keep coming automatically but cultivating goodness takes a conscious effort. 

Here is an example which is not the corporate world but metaphorically rings so true. An industrial farmer needed an additional worker at the farm. Good help was hard to find. He had hired and fired many people. Eventually, he interviewed one and asked “What can you do at the farm?” The man very confidently replied, “I can sleep when the wind blows.” The farmer did not understand what it meant but out of sheer desperation hired the man. Every day the man did his job “well”. One night, it seemed like a major storm was coming. The farmer got concerned about the harvested crop and his cattle. As the storm got worse, he quickly ran to his farm assistant, woke him up and said, “get up quickly and let’s prepare to handle the crops and shelter the animals.” The assistant said, “there is no need to get up. I am sleeping and you can also go to sleep.” Hearing this kind of a callous and non-caring answer the farmer got very angry. Since there was not much time, he ran outside to take care of things. What he saw stunned him - the grain was all well covered with tarpaulin and the animals were all protected in the barn. He had to do nothing. He went back into his home to relax and sleep. Now he could understand the true meaning of what his help said when he was hired, “I can sleep when the wind blows”. 

What is the moral of telling this true story? The person who was hired was a good person, he was an asset and not a liability, someone who owned his responsibilities well – he knew he ‘could sleep when the wind blows’ because he would have taken care of the situation ‘before the wind blows’. He was an asset to the famer because of his responsible behavior – he preempted and prevented the problem by being prepared. 

Ways to make people your asset:

1. Invest in building character - strength of character is the foundation of all great achievements.
2. Reward loyalty – dependability is more important than ability. Ability without dependability is a liability. Ability with dependability increases capability.  
3. Bring fairness into the organization. Be assertive but give everyone a fair chance to either rise up or justify their mistake. Favoritism kills effort.
4. Keep communication open both ways. It builds loyalty and trust.
5. Be approachable, warm and friendly but don’t treat your people like close personal buddies and friends. A healthy distance is important.
6. Teach them to become trouble shooters - ask them to suggest three solutions before they seek help.

Caution: - If you give them solutions straight away without getting suggestions then you will be making them permanently dependent on you. Don’t spoon feed them. 

Teach them the art of decision-making in a controlled environment– what does controlled environment mean? When people give us possible causes, solutions, recommendations and reasoning to problems, even if they make wrong recommendations, there is no damage since it is not a decision or a conclusion. We act as a clearing house for them and gradually, when they start taking little decisions correctly, their own confidence goes up and our confidence in them goes up as well. Their self-esteem also keeps going up. Very soon, the people we were spoon-feeding at one point, will become our biggest assets. They shall start taking much bigger decisions. They shall start relieving us to do much bigger things in life.

A good teacher or a parent never does the homework for their children. They always teach them how to go about the process. A good leader never does work for his people. He teaches them how to do it better. Good leaders create more leaders and leverage their positon to help others achieve. The keyword here is ‘leverage’. When we build strong leaders, they become our pillars to build a strong structure. They become are biggest assets. 

Remember: “Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently”?.